In the Lack of a Fight (Waiting for You)
by Zinfandelli
Summary: Jack's alone. Being alone isn't good for him. Why was he left all alone? (tw: self harm/cutting, graphic description of injury, skewed mental perception, blood. Please take care. Blackice, Waiting for You series)


Trigger warnings for self harm and self abuse and harmful perceptions and skewed sense of thought and morals.

And a reminder that though I write this series in a strange and baffling way that makes it seem cute, that Jack and Pitch are in fact in a supremely unhealthy relationship and no one in real life should ever *ever* harm or inflict pain upon you unless expressly permitted with routes of care and support and healing in place afterwards.

Please take care of yourself, this is not the normal mood of writing for this series, but the facts of the content here remain.

With that said, currently i am treating this short piece as a what-if scenario in my canon, and it does not hold real plot relevance to the rest of their developing relationship (I can't really imagine Pitch would act in this manner towards Jack). That is not to say, something like this is outside of the realm of possibilities for the pair.

* * *

It had been a while. A long while, too long. Far too long. Jack didn't know what to do with himself.

The kids weren't helping, playing wasn't fun. Nothing was fun, where did his fun go?

It fled. It fled really fucking fast when he realized after the second month he was alone. The first month was fine, that was fine. Really it had been fine. Pitch was busy - or something.

Now, he sat in a tree branch forcing back his shivers and watching kids wipe off melting snow as they picked themselves up to go home for the evening.

They didn't see him. None of them saw him. He was alone. Alone, like before. Had it really been that many years since before? Truly? It must have all been an illusion. A clever fantasy to pass the time, because Jack was alone. Always had been, always will be.

He grit his teeth together and forced back a whimper. No, he was stronger than this. He was stronger than his invisibility, he would not have survived otherwise, not all these centuries. Definitely not. Surely….not.

Was he even real?

Was Jack Frost more than a saying? H-he was. He Was!

And as he watched blue turn red and stain the cuff of his iced hoodie he couldn't help the laugh. He was real. He just had to be. Fake things didn't stain the treebark with their essence. You couldn't fake color. you couldn't fake this feeling, this pain.

Jack shifted and straddled the branch. His hand smoothed over his blood on the bark and smeared it into a line. He carelessly let fall the sharpened edge of ice from his fingers and watched it disappear into the snow below, faint spots of red marking the hole it left. Figments of imagination didn't leave holes in the snow, rimmed in crimson. They didn't hurt like this.

It seemed so far away now, the delicious pain of a broken arm given to him like a gift from midnight sand. The contusions and prickly burning shared between friends. Two months was a really long time to quit cold turkey.

Where did Pitch go? Why would he do this? Was it some kind of test? Was Jack failing it right now? He had given in. He had. The evidence was freezing to his wrist as he stared morbidly at the jagged edges of the cut across bone. He wasn't as good as Pitch at cutting. His ice wasn't so precise. He didn't even think about that. Pitch would laugh at him for the ripped skin.

Maybe he would scar.

He knew he wouldn't. Jack frost didn't scar...well. Not usually. He had a delightfully dark line across his throat. His only evidence. He touched at the raised line marring his skin, as he often did. This. This made him real. This happened. He loved the clean line like a collar marking him as owned.

He dug his fingers into his neck, cutting off his own breath. It didn't hurt enough, the bleary line between what wounds actually felt like wasn't there. So instead, Jack began to break off the red ice that formed around the cut on his wrist. He peeled frozen blood off and winced as he reopened the wound. The red dripped freely again, over the branch and down to the snow below. It still wasn't enough. This didn't compare to bitten open tongues or a shattered ankle.

He gouged fingers into his flesh and pulled the cut open watching him stain himself crimson. The edges started to refreeze, and Jack became aware he was gasping for breath. The plips of sound as drips of himself landed against wood faded out.

This wasn't it. This wasn't helping. This hurt. It just...hurt. The pain wasn't buzzing in his head properly, this wasn't fun, this wasn't a gift. This…

He concentrated on his wrist, stared at it hard. His breath slowed and he pulled his fingers out, instead gripping his wrist and squeezing trying to stop the blood. He watched and felt as the pain twisted sickeningly in his mind to something foreign. It stopped hurting, he didn't know what it felt like. He didn't know how to feel.

Jack didn't know what happening. It felt like static in his mind a fuzzy whirring of feeling that he couldn't decipher into recognized sense. He forgot what pain was even supposed to feel like. Was this what hurt actually was or was this what he was told it was? Was pain even bad? He didn't know at this point, couldn't feel it. It almost tickled, but then he didn't know what tickling was actually supposed to feel like anymore either. The word lost meaning, turned to gibberish.

He squeezed harder and a jolt of feeling spiked up his arm. This wasn't...he was vaguely aware this wasn't good. This wasn't what he wanted, he didn't do the right thing, but he couldn't go back now. And as he stared in detached horror at his palm freezing to his wrist by his own blood, things went dark.

...

Jack awoke confused, disoriented. He didn't know where he was and couldn't find his staff and the adrenaline that deserted him earlier rushed through him sending him bolt upright. He ripped his hand from his wrist in a quick panic then stopped as pain flared in his injured hand and arm.

Gasping, Jack looked at his mangled limb and recalled where he was. The wound was healing already, a hand-shaped smooth layer of ice sealing it closed. Both hands were a mess of frozen red, and Jack realized he was feeling again. Feeling normal, registering pain. His wrist hurt.

Moaning his distress, Jack fell back into the snow and curled up at the base of the tree he fell from when he blacked out. The pain he caused himself wasn't that great, not compared to what he was used to with Pitch...but it knocked him out flat, concentrating on it like he had.

He'd never done that before.

Never had reason to.

Didn't have reason now.

Where was Pitch? Why was he gone? Why did he leave Jack all alone? He didn't know. He wanted him back. This pain in his hand wasn't the good kind, wasn't what he wanted. It wasn't given to him, this was no gift, this proved nothing.

His healing wrist didn't confirm he existed, his blood in the snow was no evidence, it was probably just as invisible as he was. No, there was no proof here that he affected the world. No one had seen fit to bestow him the courtesy of their attention, their time, their emotions to inflict on him the pain he wished he had.

He was alone.

Where was Pitch?


End file.
